Rabindranath Tagore
Sir Rabindranath Tagore performed in his life and in his writings the functions of the " poet-prophet " of tradition. He had, as an Indian, the necessary qualifications of birth and affluence as well as of an education which he had completed in England. He had been profoundly affected by English literature as a young man and could see the West through western eyes, and for this reason his studies of Indian philosophy and culture gained in breadth and in intensity. Be was now a student and a recluse, now a teacher exponnding his doctrines at the school he founded at Shantiniketan or to larger audiences outside, and occasionally he came into the limelight as when he asked to be relieved of his knighthood in 1919, or opposed Mr. Gandhi's non-co-operation policy. His melodious, mystical verse instantly attracted W. B. Yeats in 19II—it lent itself so beautifully to sonorous recitation—and his impressive personality fascinated English audiences when he came to London at the height of his fame. He is one of those who have helped to make Indian writers conscious of the resources of their own literature in some such way as the pnatagonists of the Irish literary revival of forty years ago made the Irish self-conscious in regard to Irish literature. In both cases a background of English or European culture was neees. sary. It will be recalled that it was only last summer that a special Convocation of Oxford University was held at his village home to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Letters.
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